Ramblings, just ramblings
No more Jar Jar?
Published on July 27, 2004 By Amitty In Movies & TV & Books
If there is anything that sparks my imagination it is Star Wars. I have owned all the movie trilogy many times over, and in September I will fork over the $100 to pick up the first collection of Star Wars in DVD. It is one of the most requested DVD series that has never made. While George Lucus had decided in the dark years of the late 90s to hold off putting out the series on DVD until AFTER the current trilogy was completed and out of theaters, something changed and they are being released a year early.

The DVD set contains the Remake Trilogy, called the Special Addition. If you are a fan * And I suspect there are tons out there, maybe even reading another of my long articles*, you ponied up to see the re-release in the theaters. Added stuff, more dialogue, and Jabba introduced in A New Hope, were all added to make the story line more understandable. I'm not sure how added new panels of landscape in some scenes is helping the storyline, but I digress.

Now, with the recent release of the Epi. III title, I expect that the hype will start in ernest. Fans that waded throught The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones have been waiting for this movie. This is it baby! The death of whiny, oh-so-annoying Anakin and the birth of Darth Vader, the coolest of the cool. The original Man in Black.

The story takes place a little while after the Attack of the Clones, where we find that Palpatine has decided not to relenquish his emergency power granted to him by the Republic. Instead, he decides that the Jedi are traitors and sends out his army of the republic to crush them all. They scatter, people die, and we meet Chewbacca. I can't go into any more, just because anything else would be heresay. I will say that the new baddie, General Grievious, looks awesome cool, at least in the comics.

With the introduction of what had to be the most annoying character in the Star Wars universe, the Gungans, to the mis-casting of some of the principle leads * Hayden Christianson*, people might not be as drawn to this movie. I belong to a chapter of the Fanforce.net, and the discussion is back and forth. Will we line up like we did for Eps. I and II? Probably. As I stated back in the article, this is the movie that people ahve waited for. Like many pop icons that reach a certain level, Darth Vader has passed into History. Darth Vader is in it for the long run, still being one of the most memorable villians.

I have read some scripts for this movie, and have to say, in content, it seems a lot better than the other two. There were things about the other two that I enjoyed, but there were a lot of things that just didn't do it for me. I personally don't like Hayden, and his acting in these movies are sub-par. Natalie Portman's performances can grate on me if I've had a bad day.

There is only one other thing I would like to bring up. The continuity. We know that The Emporer sends out the Clone Army to wipe out the Jedi, and we know that in this movie, Luke and Leia are born. We are introduced to Bail Organa *played by Jimmy Smits*, and he takes Leia. We also find out that the Death Star starts to be built at the beginning of the movie. They revealed it's plans during Esp. II. My question is, by the time Luke is in his late teens and starts on the adventure to be a Jedi, the Death Star is JUST nearing completion. Now ,did it take them 18 years to build one, and if so, how did the second one get built so fast? These are, unfortunately, only questions that George Lucus can answer, or a totally huge fan.

So, will you see it?

Comments
on Jul 27, 2004
Now ,did it take them 18 years to build one, and if so, how did the second one get built so fast?

Six Sigma process improvements, no doubt.

Maybe the work had started on the second one before the first was destroyed.

Perhaps the Emperor dedicated more resources.

Plus, the second was far from complete. It had the basic infrastructure and the main gun, but the vast majority of the body was not complete.
on Jul 27, 2004
It was because they hired independant contractors for the 2nd one.


Good old Clerks....
on Jul 27, 2004
lol, clerks....
on Jul 27, 2004
Took so long because all the workers were unionized.
on Jul 27, 2004
but, they could have just used the clones right? Clones have no union...
on Jul 27, 2004
Oh, and something else that was brought to my attention: Obi's Aging. The original Obi was at least 60. So, while living on Tattoine he jsut drank a lot and neglected his body to get that old that fast? Obviously they can't match it up perfectly, but maybe that should have been something Lucus addressed
on Jul 27, 2004
I just Hope Lucas doesn't throw in the towel witht his one after the egregious cock-ups he made with Episodes I & II. You outline the lousy timing issues quite nicely and I won't bother details the lazy errors made over and over again in the other two. Will I see number 3? Yeah but not likely in the first week of it's release and I don't hold up a tremendous amount of hope for it's quality. Lucas is making 3 little kiddy movies and this is just the third.
on Jul 28, 2004
Well, I still haven't seen number 2, despite multiple people offering to loan it to me every time I say that at work. I have little to no interest, except perhaps in the Yoda fight scene at the end, which I've heard some people slating.
As far as the issues of timing, I'd think it's just that Lucas didn't bother to mesh it up. If you had the same kind of hardcore fanbase working on explaining these issues away as you did when West End Games was cooperating with DelRey books on the book line and roleplaying game line, they'd get explained pretty quickly. But Lucas mostly shit on those fans when he ignored what they had done with the storyline, and he rebooted it for Eps 1-3.

OTOH, CSGuy provides some reasonable explanations for the Death Stars, so maybe the other explanations are merely a hand-wave away, as well.
on Jul 28, 2004
The fans can't repair the movie with the same efficiency as they did the other product lines though. When the entire construct is imaginary it is easy to make imaginary fixes. Once you throw it on film though... it gets a lot harder to make mental corrections.
on Jul 28, 2004
Are you certain they start building it at the beginning of Ep 3? If it starts building a little while after and then throw in experience, improved techniques, and the second one never being finished - the timeline comes together a bit more. Of course the second one was actually intended to be bigger than the first according to various books, but it was not all that close to being finished in RotJ so I think it makes sense.

Here is a thought Maybe the plans seen in Ep 2 were being being tested out at the time at the Maw installation. In the "Jedi Academy" book series they find out there was a prototype death star built before any of them as a "proof of concept" at a secret research area near Kessel.
on Jul 28, 2004
you had the same kind of hardcore fanbase working on explaining these issues away

There have been many cases in Episodes 4-6 and 1-2 where the fanbase has rationalized Lucas's laziness. Also, many authors have explained away inconsistancies and lazy plot lines in the Star Wars novels.

One example of this that I recall is the uselessness of Luke in Return of the Jedi.

Someone at sometime pointed out that the really important characters at the Battle of Endor were Lando, Wedge, and Chewbacca. It was Chewbacca who allowed access into the moon base when he captured the walker and was able to blast through the base doors so that the rebels could deactivate the Death Star shield. It was Lando and Wedge that blew up the Death Star. All of the moralistic crap that was going on with Luke, Vadar, and the Emperor was nothing but Lucas's lame attempt at philosophical masturbation.

But this attack on the basic logic and sense of RotJ was disputed by one of the Star Wars novels that explained that the Emperor was actually using the force to control his troops, both in space and on Endor's moon. And that when Vadar killed the Emperor his troops suddenly became bumbling idiots. So the Rebel fleet in space and the rebels on the moon were able to immediately turn the tables.

This is an interesting premise, but there is nothing in the movies to even hint at such a thing. It just seems like the work of a talented writer (Timothy Zahn) covering for a non-talented and lazy writer (George Lucas).
on Jul 29, 2004
Yes, the script clearly states that the death star is starting to be built. Darth Vader and one of the higher ups in the Empire are in the final scene, watching the construction start.

The fanbase was a reason that Lucus claims is the reason that the movies continue, regardless of the fact that he claimed earlier that there was a whole series of movies. There is no fixing the last movie, to be better than the last two, but we shall have to see in 2005.